The Outcast

Chapter 15: Welcome Back To School

Chapter Fifteen: Welcome back to school

Nirvana Evans

It was Monday morning, the sky was grey and I could hear the rain falling down as it pelted my window harshly. But the rain wasn’t the main problem, school was. After spending a whole two months away from that hellhole with the narrow hallways, boring routine and rude comments from my classmates I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be going back. However, I did console myself with the reminder that it was my last year of high school and that it would be over before I knew it.     

Thanks to my early bird tendencies I’d already double showered, had breakfast and still had an extra ten minutes to kill before I had to leave the sanctuary of my home. On normal circumstances I would take advantage of these few minutes and take my journal out to write about my latest germ related thought or simply about how my day had been yesterday. I didn’t like to think of it as a diary but I guess that was a good word to describe my journal. It was like a refuge for the thoughts and feelings that I couldn’t share with people. My psychologist had recommended I keep a journal as a way of helping me get things off my chest when I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my issues to my mom or dad for that matter.

But right now there was a bigger problem going on, one I couldn’t even write down on my journal to alleviate it. And that was because the problem was centered on the fact that I couldn’t find my journal anywhere.

I wasn’t the kind of person to misplace things or lose them. Thanks to my condition I was seriously neat and organized. My closet was arranged by colors, my bed was always made and the dresser was dust free. So it really was a shock to wake up one day missing my journal. River had told me I would probably find my journal where I least expected it to be but there wasn’t a place left to look. I’d literally turned my room upside down searching for it. I’d checked every inch and corner of my room and I hadn’t even stopped to clean out the dust bunnies I found under my bed. It had been lost for almost a week now and my hopes of finding it were slowly dying out.

I considered using a random piece of paper to jot down my thoughts but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t be completely okay until I found my actual journal. But then a thought struck me. I noticed my journal missing the morning after my cousin Nate had arrived here. What if he had taken it? Ever since we were kids he’d always tease me and do anything to irritate me. And I knew it wasn’t beneath him to take something of mine. He’d probably hidden it from me as a sick joke. Oh God, what if he read it? How embarrassing! I had to get to the bottom of this before I went crazy with assumptions. So I put on my Sherlock Holmes hat (metaphorically speaking of course) and mustered up as much courage as I possibly could, which wasn’t hard to do since I was already pretty pissed at Nate.

I stomped out of my room and marched up to Nate’s closed door. I rapped my knuckles against the hard wood three times and waited for a reply.

Calm down, I tried to tell myself. Anger will get you nowhere.

“Nate! Open up!” I shouted through the door when I grew impatient. Once again, aside from his loud snoring, there was no reply. To hell with it, I thought right before I turned the knob and barged into the room. And I instantly regretted it. The bedroom was an absolute pig sty! Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere, food wrappers were pilled over the dresser, the small trash can was overflowing with crap and what looked like a half eaten cheese sandwich lay on a chipped white plate on the night table. But what was worse was the awful smell! The air stank of old sweat, unwashed clothes, stale dust and a strong scent I couldn’t exactly place. Geez he’d barely been here a week and he’d already turned the room into a disaster.